“It was a little south of there.” Willie tells the guy at the wall. “Not as far north as the hatchery.”
The guy drops his pencil down a few inches and waits for Willie’s OK. Willie nods and the guy makes a circle.
“I counted 10, and they were coming from the northwest headed southeast. So one of your diagonal arrows showing that.”
“Were these northies or southies?” Someone from the circle asks. The guy adds the arrow.
“I couldn’t tell. I didn’t recognize any of them.”
“They carrying anything?”
“Nothing beyond protection.”
“That’s good, at least.”
“Yeah.” WIllie turns to two faces that I suddenly recognize. It’s the kids from earlier today. “Get your intel on the wall.”
The boys start giving instructions to man with the pencil, and he starts marking on the wall--several small Xs.
“And what are those indicators of?” Someone asks.
One of the boys steps up to the map. “Camps,” he says, then starts pointing to the Xs one at a time. “Each of these is a camp of 2, 3 or sometimes 4 guys. All armed.”
“And they’re coming here?”
“Appeared to be.”
I start studying the map. Interstate 75 is the wide path that cuts across the bottom at a diagonal. The streets that Caroline and I walked to get to her apartment run are the long open spaces across the middle of the map. While I get my bearings, the conversation in the room picks up, the voices all mixing together into some kind of audio soup.
“Coming here for sure? You know that?”
“We don’t know anything. Not for certain.”
“But look at those camps. What else are they doing?”
“Could just be camping. It’s what I was doing before I stumbled across this place.”
“Come on. You don’t believe that. Not at all.”
“I don’t want to rush into anything. I don’t want to assume the worst when there’s not reason to. Not yet.”
“Rush into anything? Look at those locations. They are surrounding us. The guys Willie saw today were just reinforcements.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“I say that we get a party together, go out there tonight and start …”
The room is a dizzying swirl of voices. Multiple conversations happening at once. I do my best to keep up, but I get lost in the back and forth of it all.
Willie barks “That’s enough,” and the room goes quiet. He looks to me.
“What do you think?”
Everything in me goes instantly hot, like a teacher has just asked me to define the one word that I didn’t study the night before. I stammer out something about camps and locations, just trying to spit out words until I can figure out what I actually want to say.
Willie waves a disgusted hand at me , and I stop. “Tonight, we’ll guard the wall,” he says. “We’ll keep our people safe. Tomorrow, we’ll send some people out to see if we can’t figure out what’s going on.”
He pauses and waits for reaction from the group assembled. A couple of heads nod their agreement, but no one says anything.
“Tonight, Mac. Jason. You’re on the wall. The rest of us will prepare for more recon in the morning.”
The party that was loud just a few moments ago begins to break up. Guys start to gather things. They are grabbing jackets. Guns that I’m just now noticing. There’s low chatter. Willie is over in the kitchen looking at something on the counter.
I ask what it means to be up on the wall.
Willy explains: “It means you’re up on the wall. You and Jason watch out for raiding parties. Turn on the big lights once everything gets dark. It’ll light up Everything for about a quarter mile out, so anything coming head on should be pretty bright. But watch the angles. Coming from the side you won’t get that much notice.”
I step to the map, not really knowing what I’m looking for.
“So, what do you think?” I ask Willie.
“About?”
“These campers. Who are they?”
He gathers whatever it was he was studying. He folds it in half and puts it in a back pocket as he comes around the corner.
“I don’t know who they are. They could just be other people camping. Christian thing to do would be to bring them a hot meal and a warm blanket.”
He points at the newly drawn Xs one at a time, drawing a crude circle around our camp. “But I’ll tell you. That does look kind of suspicious, huh?”
I try to see it. I look hard. “Honestly, no. Not to me. It’s four Xs. And as someone who used to be out there just a few nights ago, I didn’t even know you guys existed. Yes, they’re armed, but if you have to be. If you aren’t then you’re dead. Is it possible that you guys are looking for something that may not be there?”
Willie chuckles and shakes his head. He heads for the door. “Ain’t that something.”
I follow him. He puts a hand on the knob. He begins to turn and then stops. “You know,” he turns to me, “we bring you in here. We give you food. We give you a bed and the protection to actually enjoy a night’s sleep in that bed without the worry of your wailers. And this is how you thank us. You come in here to our meeting and call us crazy. Paranoid.”
He opens the door and steps out into the courtyard.
“I didn’t say you were crazy. I just said I wondered …”
Willie’s walking. “I don’t know what things were like down there in downtown, but up north here wailers are just one of our problems.”
“What’s that mean?”
Willie doesn’t answer. I match his steps and ask again “What’s that mean?”
He gets to his apartment door and still hasn’t answered me. He unlocks his door. “What do you mean, Willie?”
He steps half inside his place then turns to me. “Hope tonight when you’re on that wall you don’t find out.”
SIX
The dark is coming on fast. Caroline is sitting outside our apartment. She’s on the ground, her knees bent and up in front of her, one of her mom’s books resting on her thighs. She turns a page then sees me.
“You need to put that away,” I say as I get close enough.
She picks up the book and holds it up. She reads the cover. “This? Why?”
“Because things around here …”
I don’t get to finish. Jason has shown up to collect me for our night on the wall.
“Things around here are what?” he asks.
“So, you’re Jason. Nice to meet you.” I extend a hand for him to shake, but he ignores it.
“Let’s go. We’re on the wall.”
“In the middle of something here,” I tell him. “Give me a few minutes. Pretty sure that I can find my way there.”
He hesitates. He looks at me then looks at Caroline, then heads to our post. We both watch him walk away before continuing our conversation.
“Clearly, things around here are strange. Different than what we thought.”
Caroline closes her book and sets it to the side. “If you’re ready to go …”
“These people are paranoid. They are outside these walls stalking people all clandestine-like. They have scouts out there keeping an eye on everyone and everything. They are plotting the whereabouts of everyone who gets within a few miles of this place. Honestly, I don’t know that Willie just stumbled upon us the other day.”
Caroline begins again. “I’m following your lead here. If you’re ready to go, then I’m ready. This was a pit stop. A couple of days to get rest and food, then we’d be back at it. So, I’m just waiting for your signal.”
I’m nodding as she’s speaking. “Good. Good. We can’t go tonight. People are watching us. They’re expecting me to be places. But in the morning we’ll go. In the meantime, read your books inside, OK?”
Caroline gathers her things and heads back indoors. I head for the wall. Our apartment is actually near the wall, but other than passing through it when
we got to camp, I haven’t paid our defenses much attention.
What looks a bit crude from the outside is actually something that’s smartly constructed. What starts as a thick wall on the front turns into a series of winding pathways that funnel anyone who might breach the exterior into a single point once they’re through. Easy pickings for anyone defending the courtyard.
And anyone trying to scale the outside has to deal with a three foot overhang if they want to come over the top. Even if it doesn’t stop them, it slows them enough that can be easily dealt with.
The whole thing is very medieval. Someone is determined to defend their castle.
Jason tosses down a rope ladder as I approach. He offers me a hand once I near the top. Our little perch is only a couple of feet wide at the most. Someone has attached round cushions to a pair of upturned pickle buckets. That’s where I’ll be sitting for the next however many hours this job lasts.
I take seat on the bucket. It wobbles under my weight and my vision goes blurry from a rush of panic. Jason reaches an arm out to steady me.
“You OK?”
I tell him that I am. He passes me a rifle, something I’ve never shot before but am sure I can fake if needed.
“Hey. Sorry if I was, you know, gruff earlier. I was still a little amped from that meeting.”
He put both hands up near his face and shook them while doing some kind of crazed look with his eyes. Something tells me that Jason is still a bit amped.
“That meeting not usual?”
“None of this is usual.” He’s looking out from the wall. It’s all street directly in front of us. Off to the sides are parking lots and other apartment buildings, some of them in various states of collapse.
“How long you been at the camp?”
“Here? Since almost day one. Got here a couple of days after the attacks. I know there are other theories, but that’s what I think they were. These were attacks.” He still hasn’t looked at me, just keeps watch and talking.
“But it was different then. We didn’t have this wall. It was just a bunch of us who happened to find our way together. I lived in a place a couple blocks away. Place is all gone to shit now, just a pile of boards. I was at my girl’s place that night. We rode out the worst of it together. Then a day or two after I told I needed to check on my place. She said ‘Cool.’ So I walked over and found it gone. Think everyone in my building died, but I don’t know. Spent the day going through what was left of my stuff and grabbing some things I wanted to keep. Left the next morning to go back to my girl’s place, but she wasn’t there. Waited a couple of hours then left. Haven’t seen her since.”
“Think she died?”
“No,” he says quickly then’s quiet. When he does speak again it’s nearly a whisper. “Least I hope not. But …” He trails off. This thought has somehow stopped the runaway train that’s been Jason so far.
It’s barely 5 p.m., not late enough for it to be dark, but the haze of clouds and dust that hang over us every day make it almost black. Generators rumble to life, and the large lights that are on thick posts behind me start to ease on. A few moments later the noonday sun is pouring over my shoulders and lighting up everything in front of me.
“How long have you all had this wall?”
“A few weeks,” he says. “A month. Willie’s idea, so we started building it after he got here.”
The lights behind me go out about a quarter mile. Everything to the bottom of the hill is now illuminated. And, that’s good, I suppose. But like bright light always seems to do, it’s made everything else extra dark. The shadows are now a deep black that looks extra ominous. But everything seems a little more ominous from up here. Maybe it’s because I’m here looking for threats, trying to keep the camp safe.
“Willie hasn’t been here from the beginning?”
“No,” Jason said. He reaches down into a small bag at his feet and pulls out a piece of something--jerky, I think.
He reaches back in and hands me a piece. “It’s rabbit,” he tells me. It’s the size of my palm, and I pull it into two smaller chunks. I pop one in my mouth, and it’s delicious.
“Whoever had my apartment before me left a bunch of spices. Pretty good, huh?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Better than that.”
I pop the other piece of jerky into my mouth. “So was the wall Willie’s idea?”
Jason nods. “The wall. The lights. Took us a while to get all of the materials organized. We had to find the generators. Had to find the gas to run them. That’s still tough to do. We have enough to last us a little while, but if you know of someplace we can find …”
I shake my head, and Jason changes directions.
“Willie helped get us all together. When I was first here it was a bit of every man for himself. And that was fine, but it made it all a little come and go. People would stay for a day or two, then they’d leave. After Willie came that all changed. People here got committed to making this work. That meant organizing meals, building the wall. We all share everything, and it works.”
“Your own little post-apocalyptic commune.”
Jason looks to me, his face scrunched in confusion. “Our what?”
“Nothing.” I wait a moment then ask: “Who had our place before us?”
“Your apartment?” I nod. “Lady named Sylvia. Had a kid. They haven’t been here in a few weeks. She had family somewhere else who she was trying to get to.”
“They make it?”
“No idea, man.”
I say a quick prayer for them, then focus on the hum of the lights. After a moment I’m lost in the gentle buzz of electricity pulsing through wire and filament. It’s the sound of modern life, and it’s comfortingly familiar. Suddenly this hand-sewn cushion on top of this plastic pickle barrel is a seat on the patio outside of a small restaurant in the middle of some nondescript city. It could be one of any dozen places. Some place in Europe maybe. Or Chicago. Or New York. It’s the summer, and I’m sitting alone, a glass of something cold is on the table in front of me. A plate of food that I’ve eaten only half of is there too. The sun has just gone down, and the lights around me have popped on. There’s conversation happening around me, and the noise is like a blanket. It’s wrapped me and is keeping warm and happy. I’m in a crowd. I’m in community, and it’s all I need or want.
I’m listening to the chatter around me when a crack pulls me back to reality. In my head, in my little mentally constructed momentary reality, it sounds more like an explosion, and my head is swiveling back and forth trying find fire or crumbling buildings or crowds of people fleeing from something. I’m looking for the things that I saw the night a few months ago when everything collapsed.
There’s another snap, and this one yanks me back to reality. I look to Jason, but he’s useless.
“Uh …” That’s all Jason can say. I’m wanting him to tell me what to do next, but he doesn’t say anything. He scrambles for the gun that he’s laid at his feet.
There’s a third snap. Jason has his gun shouldered. I grab mine as we hear the first of what become constant battle cries. A moment later a half dozen people with crudely painted faces come storming out into the light. They are screaming and shouting the kind of cries that you need when you’re trying to fake your brain into accomplishing more than you are actually capable of.
Jason punches a button and an alarm sounds behind us, a siren blaring in my ears. That’s followed by a pair of gunshots. Jason’s fired. Two of the raiders fall.
More screaming and more raiders join the attack. It’s a half dozen more and they come in from my side. I fire. I shoot high, hoping that whoever this is will end this attack. That they’ll peel off to the side and disappear again into the dark.
Three more shots come from my right this time. People have joined us on the wall.
“Keep shooting!” It’s Willie. He’s taken down another two raiders. Three more fall injured before the raiders scurry back into the dark.
My br
eath is short and shallow. It’s like I’ve just run a race. We are all like this. We’d lay down if we could, but there are too many of us up on the wall now.
“What was that?” I ask between deep breaths.
“War party.” Willie says. He’s stood up, gun still on his shoulder and in a prone position. He’s ready to fire again if these guys have just retreated to the dark in an effort to regroup.
“War party?” I ask.
“Yeah, from a couple miles over. They want our camp.”
“Then why not just let them come in? Work with them. Build a bigger, better camp.”
“We don’t have space.” Willie says as he stares out into the distance.
“You had space for us.”
Willie sits and hands his gun to Jason. Jason takes it and sets it off to the side, then Willie begins to explain: “It’s a resources question. We don’t have the food. And it’s not like we live in the middle of nowhere and can just start hunting more. We’re quickly expending those resources. Soon, it’s going to be slim pickings around here. We’re happy with our camp’s size.”
“We’re also happy with our safety.” Jason joins the conversation. “Our situation is unique. Not any other camps around here that are shaped like this, fully enclosed the way we are. We haven’t dealt with a wailer attack in weeks. They kind of gave up on us.”
Jason begins to say something else, but I finish his thought for him. “But if they gave up on you then things got worse for the other camps.”
“Exactly,” Willie says. “So that means two things. We have to protect ourselves from those people who want to run us out of here.”
“And.” Jason takes over. “We should get rid of those other camps. If there’s no one else around us, the wailers will move out of here, and we’ll become infinitely safer.”
“Starve out the wailers,” I say.
“So, tomorrow night, that’s what we do.” Willy picks up the ball again.
“Wait. What?”
“Tomorrow night we go in and take out the camp across the highway. We cross the bridge quietly, go in from the back and silently take everyone out. Knives, not guns. I don’t want a repeat of what we saw here tonight. And that’s why we need your girlfriend. We need her to magic up something to protect us.”
The Road North Page 6
